


Schrödinger’s Jack

by otrame



Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: M/M, Sentient!Tardis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-23
Updated: 2014-08-29
Packaged: 2018-02-14 10:34:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2188536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/otrame/pseuds/otrame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor decides it's time to tell Jack the truth about why he left him on the Gamestation.  He's just not sure Jack will forgive him for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Question

**Author's Note:**

> This is an edited version of a story I published on A Teaspoon and an Open Mind several years ago. 
> 
> WARNING: Should I have any actual mathematicians amongst my readers, please remember this is all just technobabble. I’m using your jargon for my own purposes and probably doing it in a fashion that will make you want to tear your own eyes out and jump up and down on them. Sorry, but a great fondness for Numb3rs just isn’t enough to overcome my sad lack of knowledge. If it’s any consolation, wait until I make anyone who knows anything about physics in my audience cry like itty bitty babies in subsequent chapters. That ought to cheer you up.

Jack looked up at the Doctor, wondering if this would be a good time. They were sitting on the floor of the console room. Between them, the temporal stabilizer was spread out, for the most part in pieces smaller than Jack’s fist. Jack had suspected that this bit of maintenance was the Doctor not wanting to let his “Children of Time” go their separate ways just yet. He could understand that. Seeing Rose again had been fantastic. They were all fantastic. Well, except for that other Doctor. Frankly Jack found himself more than a little freaked out by the partial Time Lord. A Time Lord’s power and a human’s mind set? That was a disaster waiting to happen and Jack didn’t think it would wait very long. He didn’t know what the Doctor was going to do about it, but he suspected that whatever plan the original Time Lord had come up with was not a plan that made him happy.

Still, this was the first time they had spent alone together and it might very well be the last for a while. And he needed to know.

So he said, “Can I ask you a question, Doctor?”

***

The Doctor glanced up. The tone of Jack's question had been casual. Very casual. However, the undertones in his voice warned the Doctor that however casual Jack might appear, the question was important. He had a fairly good idea what it was going to be. He’d been resisting answering that question for quite a while now, but with a sort of interior shrug he accepted that Jack really did need the truth. He just wasn’t at all sure that he could explain.

Or that Jack would thank him for doing so.

Still, the man deserved a chance to understand, so without looking at him, while noting that the osmosis damper was looking a little rough along the quadrilated interface. He took out the sonic screwdriver and used it to correct the problem, pleased that it had been several hundred years since the last time he had needed to do this. As he worked, he said in his Musing Voice, “I believe that there is evidence to suggest you can.”

He could almost feel Jack biting down on his frustration as he continued in his casual tone, “Well, I was just curious.”

“ ‘bout what?” 

“Why did you leave me there on the Gamestation?” 

The Doctor looked over the top of his glasses at him. Jack had given up all attempts to look casual. His expression was calm but the hurt was there to be seen.

“I know all the reasons you’ve given me. ‘Busy man. Moving on.’ And I know I’m all Wrong and everything…” The Doctor could hear the effort it took to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

The Doctor went back to the mechanism in his hands. “And you think there is more to it than that.” That was not a question and Jack didn’t treat it like it was.

“I was happy, Doctor. For the first time since I was a kid, I was happy. You and Rose. You made me happy.” His voice had gotten a little tight and he apparently stopped to regain control. “We saw such sights. We were always in trouble and always running, but we salvaged any good there was to be gotten out of any situation we found. We helped people. We really did.” He shook his head, lowering his gaze to the outer casing of the conceptual geometer relay that he had been cleaning, running his fingers over the intricate design that helped shape the field separation algorithms. Then his eyes came up, and the expression in them struck hard. “And we had fun. We laughed. Do you remember that? Do you remember how much we laughed?”

The Doctor did not interrupt, or drop his eyes, his face calm and sympathetic. When Jack asked the question, he nodded, letting a little smile come to his features. Yes, they had laughed a great deal. 

He saw Jack’s eyes drop back to the relay case in his hands again. “I had something I could believe in again, Doctor,” he said softly. “I believed in you. And you left me. You took Rose away and you left me alone.” He paused a moment, then dropped the casing and met the Doctor’s gaze. “So I need to know. Why?”

***

Jack was not sure was to expect. Well, that wasn’t quite true. He expected another flippant and quiet possibly hurtful rebuff. Another refusal to even treat the question seriously. But he’d decided to try once more to get a straight answer. And he’d promised himself that whatever response he got, he would never ask again.

The Doctor’s gaze held his for a long moment. Jack tried to understand what he saw in the mobile face. Compassion? Yes, certainly. But there was something else. Something flickered in his eyes. The alien. The Time Lord. 

The Doctor dropped his gaze back to the piece of equipment in his hands and Jack had to admit he felt a little relieved. The Doctor in Time Lord mode always left him feeling a little uncomfortable.

“Does it even matter anymore, Jack? Really? Those were good times, but they would have ended eventually even if we had never gotten anywhere near the Gamestation. You know that, don’t you?”

Jack said evenly, “I know that.” He waited.

The Doctor continued working for a while, then said, “I can’t, Jack. I can’t explain.” His voice was quiet and unemotional.

Jack felt the old hurt, the old anger flare. He held on to his control, kept those emotions out of his voice. “Yes, you can, Doctor. I can understand your need to get into the Vortex at that moment. But you could have come back for me. Once things had… resolved. You could have come back. I waited…” He stopped when his voice cracked a little on that last word.

The Doctor was shaking his head before Jack finished speaking. “No, Jack, you don’t understand. I literally can’t tell you. Well, that’s not true. I could tell you. But you wouldn’t understand.”

Jack, holding on to his exasperation with the very edges of his fingernails said, “All I am asking you is why–”

“How much math did they get you through at the Time Agency. Differential fractal geometry at least, yes?”

Jack’s exasperation dodged neatly out of the grip of his fingernails and exploded. “What the hell does that have to do with why you left me there with all those dead people on that dying station–”

“Jack, please. I am trying to answer your question. You must have had some recursion set theory or you would be blowing up half the universe every time you turned one of those things on.” The Doctor’s nod indicated his vortex manipulator.

Jack had gotten hold of his temper again. With a weary sigh, he said, “Yes. Recursion set theory, temporal topological combinatorics, discrete temporal calculus…”

“Computational chaos theory, of course.”

Jack smiled. It did not reach his eyes. “Of course.”

“R’Kluth’s Theorem?”

Jack sighed, “Solved that before I even got to the Academy. ”

“Did you really? Well done.” His grin was the one that could once make Jack want to wag his tail like a small puppy. To Jack’s chagrin he found it still did. “So, you had a good solid background in temporal math as far as had been developed in the 51st century.”

“Yes.”

The Doctor took his sonic screwdriver, fiddled with the settings a moment, then did something Jack couldn’t see to a small, black, and rather wobbly something that he then inserted into a small casing. As he did this, he murmured, “Well, that, you see, is the problem.”

“What is? What does any of that have to do with–”

“The difference between what you know and what you need to know is like the difference between 2+2=4 and…” The Doctor waved a hand. “And, well, and what you know.”

Jack finally gave up. “Alright,” he said stiffly. “I get it. You don’t want to answer me and you are going to keep playing these games until I give up and walk out. So just to save us a bunch of time…” He got to his feet and started for the door.

The Doctor could move with amazing speed if it was needed. Jack found himself stopping to avoid running into the Time Lord, who was now standing between Jack and the door. To his profound shock, the Doctor took Jack’s face in his hands and kissed him. It was a solid pressing of lips together, warm and sweet. Jack stood, swaying slightly, staring at the Doctor.

“I’m trying to tell you,” the Doctor said in a low, pained voice. “I really am. Please don’t leave.”


	2. The Anomaly

So once more they were sitting on the floor in the console room surrounded by bits of control circuitry. The Doctor went back to work. Jack watched him. The aftershocks of the kiss were still reverberating through him. It had been done, he knew, to get his attention, to reassure him that the Doctor was not playing with him.

Jack closed his eyes. Memories of the last time the Doctor had kissed him… 

He had thought for more than a year now that he’d never have the privilege of remembering the Doctor’s lips on his with pleasure. Not that there hadn’t been pleasure, the god’s all knew, but that night the extent of the destruction of Jack completed by the Master during that long, long year had been revealed in full. That night the Doctor had healed him, at what personal cost, Jack knew he would never know. The process had been completely devastating, but had left Jack able to begin to be Jack again. That night had made it possible to go home. To go back to Torchwood. To go back to his team. To go back to Ianto. 

Ianto. The Doctor had made it possible for him to be with Ianto again. He felt a twinge of guilt. _I shouldn’t have done this_ , he thought. But when the Doctor looked up at him there was a look of deep affection in his eyes. 

“Hand me that artron bandwidth rheostat.” When Jack looked helplessly around the various components around him the Doctor added, “The purplish green thing by your left foot. That’s it.” He fitted it into the growing complication in front of him. As he worked, he said conversationally, “I suppose I must have been about fifty. By our standards, still just a kid. Still in school of course.” He looked up at Jack and grinned. “It takes even a Time Lord quite a while to soak it all up.”

Jack didn’t protest this time, didn’t ask what tales of the Doctor’s school years had to do with the question he’d asked. He just nodded.

“I had been working on trans-dimensional positioning equations. Tricky stuff. Drop a decimal place there and you can end up with half your head a couple of centuries in the past and in the wrong universe to boot.” He was looking through his glasses at something in the tangle in front of him. Since the glasses were sitting on he end of his nose, he had to tilt his head back quite a bit, and Jack found himself smiling at the image before him, the last of the most powerful race in the Universe, sitting cross-legged on the deck of his TARDIS, his hair in wild disarray, and his head twisted so far back on his long slender neck that he appeared to be in distinct danger of having that head fall off. “Of course a TARDIS does all that for you, but they wanted us know to what it was the TARDIS was doing, because every… once… in… a… while…” He was slipping those little green and orange crystals back into place and his words were coming out in time with this process. “Every… once… in… a while… something… might… go… wrong.”

Jack tried to keep from laughing out loud. “No, really?” he said, going for casual interest and almost succeeding. “Just once in a while?”

The Doctor’s goofiest grin flashed. “Just once in a while.”

The TARDIS gave out a little psychic push that was very much the equivalent of an outraged “Oi!”

They laughed, and each reassured her that she was the most wonderful thing in this or any other Universe and they wouldn’t have her any other way. Jack realized suddenly that the TARDIS was deeply uneasy about something. It had been hovering in the back of his mind for some time. He also realized the Doctor was trying to reassure her. Jack wondered once more what was hovering in the atmosphere in the TARDIS. He had been aware of it since they all came back on board that the Doctor was hiding something, something that made him unhappy, but it was only now that he realized the TARDIS was equally uncomfortable.

“Anyway,” the Doctor went on, breaking into Jack’s suddenly uneasy thoughts. “I was working well, the bijections were all working perfectly, then suddenly I had a serious problem.” 

“What?”

“All of a sudden they weren’t. Bijections. I was getting injections, surjections, ” he looked up at Jack and said, in a tone that suggested life as they knew it had threatened suicide, “and none of the anomalous surjections were bijections.”

Jack shook his head, “Wait, you said you were doing trans-dimensional positioning equations.”

“I was.”

“Well if that’s anything like temporal positional notation…”

“Not at all. Nothing like. I suppose for the sake of brevity we can say that my equations were supposed to be mapping a series of points on a 15-dimension temporal spatial continuum the way temporal positional equations would map your manipulator’s next arrival point.” He saw the hesitation in Jack’s nod, and sighed. “Well, that doesn’t really explain it either. Let’s just say that there was something wrong. Something, and mind you, something in the real world, not in my equations, was very, very wrong. The, hmmmm, the ‘map’ I had constructed did not match the real world. It _had_ to for the same reason that 2+2=4 in base 10 arithmetic systems, but it didn’t.”

Jack started to make a remark, and decided to just shut up and listen.

“I’m not going to go into all the… intricacies of my status in that academy, Jack. I was brilliant, but I was neither very conventional nor very compliant and they really _hated_ that. My…” he cleared his throat. “My apparent failure to successfully solve the problem was going to be met in some circles with considerable… pleasure. So I worked on it for quite a bit longer than I probably should have before I finally went to Barusa and told him my problem.”

“What did he say?” Jack asked softly. 

“He listened very carefully, looked at my math, then scowled at me and said, ‘I would never have believed it. You pass.’ ”

“What?”

The Doctor chuckled. “That’s what _I_ said. It was the exam to become a senior student, and I had just passed it. And,” he added, with an air of modesty so false that might as well have been wearing plastic glasses with a big nose and Groucho mustache attached, “the youngest to do it since the days of Rasillon.” 

“That’s great, Doc, but I don’t understand. What was the test?”

“Finding the problem–it was called the Anomaly–thoroughly investigate it, ruling out personal miscalculations, and then report it to your Tutor. And you had to complete this process without knowing anything about it.”

Jack leaned back a little, puzzlement still shaping his brow. “I still don’t…”

“The Anomaly was one of the Four Great Mysteries, Jack. Many great, and I do mean truly great, Time Lords spent their lives studying it.”

Jack was determined not to press the Doctor too hard. He believed now that the Doctor was honestly going to tell him what he wanted to know, and honestly did not know quite how to do that. 

But the Doctor’s remarks about reality not matching the equations had completely bewildered him, so he asked diffidently, “But if the equation doesn’t match reality doesn’t that mean that the equation is wrong?”

The Doctor threw him a disdainful glare. “ _Your_ equations, perhaps.”

“So it was reality that was wrong.”

The Doctor was fitting something almost microscopic into the complex array before him, and Jack was not expecting an immediate answer, so he was surprised when the Doctor said, “Yes.” After a brief pause he continued, “Mind you, Rasillon himself had trouble accepting that. Towards the end, they say he was becoming quite obsessed about it. Some even say that that is what caused…”

Jack recognized the tone and did not expect him to continue the sentence. It was the sort of sentence he didn’t finish himself, so he could hardly complain. 

There was a silence. Jack, still not wanting to push the Doctor, remained silent. Actually, now that he thought of it, remaining silent was pushing him. Jack found himself repressing another grin.

Finally, the Doctor said, “It took several thousand years of intensive study before the experts came to the conclusion that the Anomaly was being caused by the uncertainty of a particular event. The event itself was unknown but they were pretty sure it was something that sent shockwaves through reality.” He paused a moment while he ran the sonic screwdriver over the nearly completed repair, looking at the tiny readout with pursed lips. At last he continued, “Ever drop something into a perfectly still swimming pool? The waves expand at first, then they hit the walls. In a pond, they are almost extinguished as they hit the shore, but in a swimming pool the water is still relatively very deep at the edge and the walls are vertical and hard. The waves bounce and continue expanding back across the pool, where they meet other waves that have bounced off other walls. It all becomes incredibly complex: the way the waves interact with other waves and with the wall, the patterns one sees at various points through time and space…” He reached out a hand and Jack handed him a component, not realizing until much later that the TARDIS had guided him to pick up the one the Doctor wanted. 

The Doctor was looking through his glasses again at the stabilizer, now nearly completed. “Now if you imagine that the surface of that swimming pool is in a largish number of dimensions, and we are talking not only about the complexity of the patterns that _did_ happen, but also the complexities that _might_ have happened I think you can see that even for Time Lords finding the exact time and place this event happened– or just as likely, _didn’t_ happen–would be a bit of a struggle. It didn’t help that they did not have the slightest idea what the event was.” He grinned suddenly, not looking up from what he was doing. “You should have seen the arguments senior students used to get into about that. We all got called up for behavior not consistent with the dignity of a Time Lord. Although I believe that getting called up for arguing in an undignified manner about the Anomaly was becoming a firmly entrenched tradition by that time so…”

The stabilizer was back in one piece. The Doctor sat with his hands on it, his face gone suddenly blank. Jack could feel the sudden grief. _He’s remembering that all his old school mates are dead. The whole race is dead. Everything he knew back then is dead and gone_ , Jack realized. To get the Time Lord’s mind off this as quickly as possible, he asked, “So did anyone ever figure out what the event that might or might not have happened was?”

The Doctor, still staring at his hands, murmured. “Yes. I did.”

Something about the way he said that got to Jack. He felt a flare of dread he could not entirely understand. With considerable apprehension, he watched as the Doctor’s face tilted up and those amazing brown eyes met his. In a strained voice, the Doctor added, “I was there when it happened.”


	3. Timey-Whimey

The Doctor sat completely still. It seemed to Jack that even the TARDIS had stopped the almost imperceptible hum that was always there in the back of his mind. The silence was staggering. The Doctor’s eyes did not leave Jack. He seemed to be waiting. After a long moment, he raised one eyebrow and tilted his head to the side, obviously waiting for Jack to get it. And there was only one way he could expect Jack to know anything about it.

“You’re saying that I am the Anomaly?” 

The Doctor’s head tilted back, and he grinned at Jack, clearly pleased. “No. The Anomaly was a disruption of reality caused by the uncertainty surrounding an event. Once the event took place there was no more uncertainty.”

“And the event was?”

The Doctor blinked very slowly. “The event was a permanent connection forged between reality and the Vortex, thus changing the nature of reality.”

“Me.”

“You becoming immortal.”

Jack dropped his head into his hands. “But Doctor, I don’t understand. Time Lords traveled through time. Time Agents do, other sentient beings. You all must have been past 200 k before. I mean, why was there uncertainty? And why has it resolved in any way? Just because it was resolved on my own time line and on yours…”

The Doctor sighed. “This is the part that is so hard to explain. Jack, you know that, counter to your experience, Time is not linear. You have enough of the math to know that. You had to deal with that fact every time you programmed that vortex manipulator of yours.”

“I know time is not linear, Doctor.” He sounded angry. 

“You know it, but you can’t experience it. I can. I don’t need a mathematical function to tell me that Time is this big sort of wobbly ball of…” He stopped, looked down at the way his hands were trying to shape the wobbly ball in the air. “I never can get past that part. I always end up sounding…”

“Mad?” Jack said, looking up at him in something like despair. 

The Doctor, still staring at his hands, which were still fruitlessly trying to shape a concept for which there were no words, scowled. "When Rose created that link between you and the Vortex, Time rang like a bell." His hands shook, simulating a vibration. "It was felt throughout the entirety of Time. Past and future." Then he dropped his hands into his lap and sighed. “I was at Princeton University in 1934 once. Had a nice long talk with a physicist who had written a series of really brilliant papers that just sort of set up quantum physics with a solid mathematical base. He’d won the Nobel prize for them. I’d read his papers in the 1970s and I was curious about him. Between them, he and Einstein had given human notions of physics a kick upward that most species take a couple of centuries to accomplish. They and several colleagues, Bohr, Heisenberg, others, did it in less than 30 years. I wondered, you know, if someone was interfering with history there.”

“Were they?”

“No. No, it was just a group of geniuses, right place, right time. He was trying to come up with a way to express some concerns he had with the way some people were interpreting his work. He said he could write equations all day, but even physicists needed to hear it in words before it was real to them. He was trying to come up with a thought experiment to show why trying to use the equations he and others had developed for subatomic physics wouldn’t work at the macro level. I had just helped his wife get their cat into a box to be taken to the vet, and it occurred to me…”

Jack started laughing. “You suggested the cat in the box scenario, did you?” 

Jack’s amusement seemed to offend the Time Lord slightly. “Well, it did make the point he wanted to make. You’d end up with a cat dead and alive at the same time …”

Jack, still chuckling, said, “…until you opened the box and by your observation collapsed the waveform of all the possible states the cat could be in to the one it was actually in. I get it. I always wondered though, if anyone considered what would happen if the gas had been released. Your observer might end up as dead as the cat.”

“Jack,” the Doctor said sternly. “You are missing the point.”

“The point is that you better be careful while opening boxes that will have either a very angry cat or poison gas in it. A lesson we’ve had to learn at Torchwood. I remember once we found…”

The Doctor watched as Jack’s voice faded away and he began to stare into space. 

At last, Jack said, “The waveform collapsed.”

The Doctor nodded, a flash of pride in his eyes, “Well done. Yes.”

Jack’s voice had gotten very quiet and as he spoke it became thicker with emotion. “You had to get Rose to safety. Reality had just taken a giant step to the left and you weren’t sure what the hell was going to happen.”

“All the adjustments needed to compensate for the Anomaly had to be unadjusted. It wasn’t there anymore. I wasn’t sure I’d taken all the Vortex out of Rose and I could feel the shockwave of what she had done building around us. I triggered all the protective chemistry available to a Time Lord and transferred it to Rose, but I didn’t know yet if it had worked. She could have been dying. I knew _I_ was dying. I wasn’t sure I could regenerate in that environment. Jack, I had to get out. And I couldn’t take you with me.”

Jack nodded, his eyes starting to shine with tears, “I can understand that, Doctor. But that doesn’t explain why you didn’t come back later. You could have come back for me.”

There was a very log silence. Jack thought, _He’s not going to tell me. He’s going to go on letting me wonder. Why won’t he tell me?_ Then he realized that there was a conversation going on. The Doctor had placed a hand on the support structure near him, fingers caressing. There was suddenly an enormous tension in the air. 

At last, the Doctor turned to Jack. With a voice full of sorrow and something like fear, he said, “I tried, Jack. When things had settled down a little. I tried. More than once.” He sighed. Then, looking steadily into Jack’s eyes, he said, “She wouldn’t let me. The TARDIS. She wouldn’t go back for you. I could have forced her, but that would have involved something that would have hurt her. Hurt her badly. I couldn’t do it. I’m sorry.”

***

Jack opened his mouth. Then he shut it. He opened it again. Again, he could not make words come out. Too many, all at the same time, all wanted out and he was very afraid of what the winner in that competition would be.

 _Wait_ , he told himself. _For once in your miserable life, just wait. And try to think._

The TARDIS was his friend. He loved her and he had thought she loved him. No, she did love him. He knew she did. He was never sure just how intelligent she was, but her sentience was not in question. He remembered the little flutter of joy that had caressed him when he came back on board this time. The first time she’d been too concerned about her dying Time Lord. They’d all been too concerned. But a few hours ago, when he’d come back inside he’d felt her pleasure. He’d called her _Emglafin_ , “Little girl,” in the language he’d learned as a child, and caressed the door frame as he came in and he’d felt the sweet little trill along his nerves, even though she’d been injured ( _again!_ ), even though the task ahead of her would half kill her all over again. 

No. 

No there had been a reason. He knew it. Jack forced himself to set aside the feelings of betrayal, hurt, fear and, yes, rage that swept through him. There had been a reason.

He drew a deep breath, locked his eyes on the Doctor’s and said very quietly, “Please explain.”

The Doctor’s eyes were... bright. Full of some emotion Jack couldn’t define except in reference to the intensity. Brown eyes burning into his soul… Goddesses, yes, he remembered that. A gentle touch when his whole body expected a blow, caressing away that expectation. A voice soft and full of a passion that did not hurt, did not tear into his body or his mind, did not laugh at his tears. Eyes that loved.

Then the moment passed. The Doctor got to his feet, reached down to pick up the newly rebuilt temporal stabilizer, found Jack’s hands there, too, helping. Together they maneuvered the bulky, awkward thing back under the consol. Together they began the process of reconnecting it.

“Did I ever tell you that I was not her first?”

Jack’s hands, busy with putting the fittings back on, froze. “Who’s first?” He made himself go back to work. The Doctor couldn’t walk a conversational straight line if you held a blaster to his head. Patience was the only defense he had in this situation.

“The TARDIS. She was quite an old ship when we met. Obsolete.” The Doctor sighed. “I was not supposed to have her. To be honest, I, erm, well I sort of borrowed her.”

Jack dropped the spanner he’d been using, staring at the Doctor’s slight blush. Jack started to laugh and for a moment he was afraid that the laughter would get completely out of control. Then he managed to choke out, “You stole her. You did, didn’t you? You’re a TARDIS-thief.”

The Doctor, his face getting quite red, said heatedly, “I rescued her. They were going to decommission her, Jack. Nice phrase that. Decommission. Do you know how you decommission a sentient being?”

That stopped Jack’s mirth cold. He frowned. “You’re not saying they were going to …”

He couldn’t say the word. The idea horrified him.

“They were going to kill her.” 

“ _Why?_ ”

The Doctor sighed. “It wasn’t… It wasn’t as bad as I make it sound. Her temporal focus, her Time Lord, was dead. They… they don’t do well without their focus. They become…” He sighed again and his hand went out to caress the pillar of the consol near the access panel they had opened. “She was in so much pain. No one wanted her. It was unusual for a TARDIS to outlive their focus. She was obsolete and she was… different, and no one wanted her.” 

“So you saved her?”

The Doctor continued to work as he spoke, and after hesitating a moment, Jack went back to helping. “I don’t want you to think I set out to rescue her. I needed a TARDIS and she was the one that was there. I… Jack perhaps some day I’ll tell you the whole story, but for now, just know that I took her. She was more than half-mad with grief, she’d been badly injured and no one had bothered to try to help her, and she had been in pain almost her entire life. We couldn’t go through the usual process to make the bond.” He leaned his head against the consol, smiling a little sadly. “Repairing her, changing the control systems so they didn’t hurt her anymore, modernizing most of her other systems…. We got to know each other very well.”

Jack nodded, sliding another bracket into place and using the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver to–unusually–drive the screws that held the support frame to the stabilizer. 

“It wasn’t until many years later that I learn how her original Time Lord had died, how she’d been injured.” The Doctor slid the last coupling into place, tested it, then patted the stabilizer. “There, how’s that?”

Jack saw a number of lights come on in the stabilizer, heard the hum. He stood up, dusted off his trousers, then went to slump into the jump seat, watching while the Doctor took the TARDIS through a series of tests. Finally the Doctor murmured, “ _Molto bene_.” and turned to face Jack, leaning against the consol.

“Her original Time Lord was a cold-hearted bastard, Jack. Not deliberately cruel, you understand. He just didn’t care. Didn’t care enough about her to see she got proper maintenance, didn’t care that the control toggling hurt her, didn’t care about anything at all except his own studies, his own research. Classic Time Lord. Everything I didn’t want to be.”

Jack decided this would be a really good time to keep his mouth shut. It disturbed him that the Doctor looked as if he might cry. The Time Lord cleared his throat and said, “Sometimes, it is so hard not to hate him. And yet, you know, Jack, that if he had not been like that, I would never have had her and think of what that would have meant.”

Jack smiled a little. “Can’t even imagine it.”

The Doctor ran his hands through his hair, staring in what looked to Jack like real distress at the center console.

At last, Jack said, “What ever it is, Doctor. Just tell me. You were right before. It doesn’t really matter anymore. I just need to know. So I can let it go.”

The Doctor nodded, slowly. Jack was thinking of the years he had spent on Earth before he realized that he couldn’t die. In those years, he had thought he would never see the Doctor again, that he would grow old and die on a world that was, to him, so alien, so lonely. He thought of the years of walking the tightrope of working for Torchwood and trying to maintain any sense of decency in the face of the single-minded ferocity of those two evil bitches. He’d never told the Doctor how easy it would have been to slip back into caring for no one but himself under the onslaught of their ruthlessness. The Doctor, he knew, could not possibly understand what the waiting had done to him, the waiting that went on for more than a hundred years. The emptiness that he kept around himself as much as he could, letting someone slip under his guard only a handful of times in that century, letting himself really love someone only three times. And the Doctor could not understand, if for no other reason than Jack had no intention of telling him. Ever. Every anger, every misery, every loneliness, every hatred, all of it, should he turn them loose, would hurt the Doctor and Jack, in spite of the anger and misery and loneliness and hatred could not bear to do that. 

So he waited for the Doctor to tell him.

***

“There are places in the universe where the Anomaly twisted space/time into knots. Most Time Lords did their best to stay away from them. They could be pretty dangerous and your average TARDIS broke out in the temporal-spatial version of hives if they got too close.”

“I thought you said the Anomaly didn’t exist any more.”

“It doesn’t. But the effects have lingered somewhat and in some places, I think it may actually have gotten worse…”

Jack shook his head. “I still don’t understand how what happened on the Gamestation all that time in the future has any effect on the past.” He saw the Doctor’s expression and added, “But I guess I just have to accept that it does.” 

The Doctor nodded. “Timey-whimey. Can’t understand it, can’t argue with it. Believe me, even Time Lords had trouble with some of this stuff, Jack. The whole question of the Anomaly was… Well it was boring to most Time Lords. It was completely fascinating to others. All the little tangles, and swirls and knots where the Anomaly had twisted space-time were just navigational hazards to most, but there were a few that studied them. There was an entire branch of study on the wheres and whys. A whole taxonomy. They were graded into types, and sub-types and degrees of disturbance and direction of twist and so forth. For a few Time Lords, that was what their lives were about. Studying the tangles.”

“What about you?”

“Well, I was interested, but it wasn’t something I spent a huge amount of time on. Had other things to do. But I had to get pretty good at recognizing some of the ripples and figure how to navigate them because one of my favorite places was nestled into a whole series of them. Hundreds of thousands of little ripples on the surface of that swimming pool, overlapping each other, causing little whirlpools and eddies, all around an unexceptional small yellow sun in an unimportant part of an nondescript galaxy.”

“Earth.”

“Yep. Haven’t you ever wondered why there was always so much activity around Earth? The Shadow Proclamation lists you as a Class 5 and you still have all those visitors. Haven’t you wondered why so many seem willing to risk the Proclamation’s wrath? All that twisted time and space. Tons of weird effects, masses of energy, lashings of anomalous matter to collect and study. The Time Lords weren’t the only ones who knew about it.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Everyone wanted a piece of it.”

There was a long moment of silence, then the Doctor cleared his throat. “The Time Lord who originally bonded with the TARDIS was fascinated with the Anomaly, especially with the disruptions of the continuum, and was an expert on the way that the effects of the Anomaly behaved near massive stars. Apparently, he just loved sliding down the edges of a really big gravity well, studying all the little bumps and twirls the Anomaly caused. Of course you really have to pay attention if you are going to do that. If you think gravitational tides are bad around a big mass, you should see what the temporal tides are like, especially when the Anomaly is making everything so unpredictable. Things can go very wrong very suddenly.” The Doctor’s eyes went hazy. Jack recognized the look. The Doctor was communicating with his TARDIS. He was not surprised when the Doctor murmured, “He’s big on forgiveness, you know.”

Jack looked around. It seemed to Jack that the room had gotten much darker. “What’s wrong,” he asked.

The Doctor said, “She’s afraid.”

“Of what?”

“You, Jack.” The Doctor was running a hand along the edge of the consol in a caress. “Terrified of you, actually. Has been for, oh quite a long time.” He looked up and the brown eyes caught Jack’s expression. “Very conflicted, my poor TARDIS. She was always fond of you. She liked the way you flirted with her. She enjoyed having you and Rose with me. She thought…”

“Thought what?”

The Doctor’s eyes looked suddenly old and haunted. “She thought we made a good team.”

After a moment, Jack said, very quietly, “We did.”

The Doctor nodded, starring into emptiness, his face bleak. “We talked before about what a good time that was. She felt that way too. She loved you dearly. It was a bad shock when she realized that you were the one who killed her Time Lord and nearly tore her apart.”


	4. Go-between

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a brief part of the episode "Last Man Standing" in this chapter.

There was only silence. Even the normal sounds of the TARDIS were so subdued that Jack had to really listen to hear them. The sound of his own heartbeat was louder. He was sitting on the floor of the consol room, alone. Alone that is, except for the ever-presence of the ship that surrounded him in unnatural quiet.

The Doctor had left him here some time ago, though Jack was not sure how long. He sat with his back against the column of the consol, knees drawn up, forearms resting on them, hands limp. 

Remembering. 

Making the last turn that brought him to the control room, already knowing it was too late, arriving just in time to see the faint blue shape and that noise fade away. _Oh, gods, they left me. What did I do? I was trying so hard to please him, to please her. What did I do wrong? How did I fuck this up?_

He sighed. 

He remembered the first few days on Earth after his near suicidal jump, attempting to make the early 21st century on earth from 198,000 years in the future. He remembered sitting in the shabby gentility of a nineteenth century drawing room in a small town in southern Texas, when he finally got the answer to the question that had been haunting him since he woke up in the middle of nowhere. He already knew he’d made it to Earth. He knew he was not in the 21st century. Now, more than two weeks later, he watched the pompous yet kindly young man who had offered him a place to live for a while, as he and his plump little wife left the room and Jack, eager to get an answer to the question of such desperate importance had snatched up the newspaper, looking for a date. He had to know _when_ he was. And there it had been, the date on the newspaper: April 23, 1869. _Too far, too bloody far_ , and the faint hope he had had of finding the Doctor when he went to Cardiff to refuel the TARDIS died inside him. 

Jack’s body was improved by 3 thousand years of evolution and genetic manipulation, not to mention the careful breeding by the Time Agency and all the little additions to his body they’d done that made it less likely that he would die on a mission, all of that taken together, and he could expect to live to be about 175. He was already nearly seventy, even though he knew from experience that humans in 1940s London guessed his age at half that. He remembered standing there in that little sitting room in a dusty town in the middle of Texas, seeing that date and knowing he would never see the Doctor and Rose again. 

Another sigh. It seemed almost silly now, but at first he’d not realized that he would be able to wait for the Doctor as long as it took. Oh, he’d possibly died once or twice in the next twenty years without realizing it. There had been a couple of strange incidents. But when he’d been shot in the chest in 1892 and then woke up uninjured, he’d begun to understand. Early in 1899, after proving to himself that he would wake up after dying, and that his failure to age at all was not just good breeding, he’d made the plan to go to Cardiff and wait. 

For some reason, knowing that he could wait for the Doctor had knocked the emotional legs out from under him. He’d made some sort of accommodation to the idea of living the rest of his life there on Earth, but the prospect of waiting for the Doctor took that away. The only other time he’d ever drunk like that was after he left his partner and the Time Agency behind. It had taken him a long time to go back to his usual habit of seldom drinking anything but water.

He shook his head, thinking about what the Doctor had said after he’d told Jack that the TARDIS was afraid of him.

***

Jack said, “Something I’ll do in the future?” His voice was unsteady.

The Doctor shook his head. “No Jack. Just by being what you are. Do you remember I once told you that you were like a large rock in the middle of a river? Time flows in eddies around you.”

Jack shrugged. “I think so. Before you brought me back to Earth the last time.” He search his memories of a period that he usually tried fairly hard to forget. It had not been a good time. “Yeah, yeah, I remember. You said the eddies scared you.”

The Doctor looked a little distracted. “Did I say that? I suppose I did. When you are used to navigating along on a huge river and all of a sudden there is a big rock in the middle of the stream… Yes, I like that analogy. It’s apropos here as well. By that analogy the TARDIS’ original focus ran her straight into that rock at full speed. It broke her, killed him. And when you came across the Plas running toward her, being what you are, she panicked and ran.”

Jack was thoughtful, “To the end of the universe. And all that followed. So it was all because of me. All of it. What the Master did. All of it.” Another thought occurred to him, “Oh, gods, the next time she saw me I used a machine gun on her.” He buried his face in his hands. “No wonder she hates me.”

The Doctor snorted and said, “Don’t be so stupid, Jack,” with a tone of real annoyance. “She loves you. She always has. Of all the human companions I’ve had, you are by far her favorite. Part of that is because she can really hear you. You know how to focus your thoughts at her. Most of my companions have been from eras where that sort of thing was not standard kindergarten training. And you never had any trouble with the idea that she was sentient. You treated her with respect from the moment you first came aboard.”

***

Jack’s mind seemed to be wandering all over the place. He wanted to get home. The Doctor had assured him that Ianto and Gwen were okay, but he needed to see for himself. Yet he needed to fix this mess first. The Doctor had not wanted to tell him because he knew the trouble it would cause. The TARDIS had been able to deal with it as long as Jack did not know what had happened. Now she was frightened and hurt. He growled softly in frustration at his own stupidity, making fists and then burying his face in them. Why the hell hadn’t he realized that the Doctor had a good reason for hiding what had really happened? Jack had verbally slapped poor Gwen around for not leaving bad enough alone with Nikki Bevin, and here he had just done the same thing. Because he couldn’t accept, couldn’t trust that the Doctor had his reasons, that he was trying to protect both Jack and his beloved old friend from the consequences of knowing what had really happened that day on the Gamestation.

Ianto had taken care of Nikki Bevin. He’d become so very proficient with the right dose of retcon and the right method of suggesting a memory. Back in Cardiff, Nikki remembered that they’d found Jonah’s body and it was just so typical of Torchwood that that pain was a major improvement over what she had faced before a bland, handsome victim support social worker in a very nice suit had fixed her a cup of tea. Jack was afraid that _this_ mess could not be fixed even to that pitiful degree.

He thought about Ianto a moment, remembering the wonder of having someone who seemed to understand him in ways no one, not even the Doctor, did, who also did _not_ put up with his crap. Ianto, to whom he could say things he could say to no one else. Then, in his thoughts, a memory blossomed. 

Ianto, sitting on his desk, meeting his eyes for a moment, hesitant. “I… know you get lonely.”

And Jack had said quietly, “Going home wouldn’t fix that. Being here, I’ve seen things I never dreamt I’d see. Loved people I never would have known if I just stayed where I was.” Jack noticed that when he’d used the word “loved” Ianto’s eyes dropped, as if, for a moment, he were afraid of what he would see in Jack’s. Then his eyes came back up, clearly facing that fear. So Jack had made it clear, had said what he was thinking. “And I wouldn’t change that for the world.”

There was a pause as Ianto searched his expression, then he’d jerked forward, pulling Jack into a passionate kiss. 

Thinking back to that moment, Jack realized suddenly what he needed to do.

***

“Doctor?”

The Doctor glanced up from his book. “Hmm?”

Jack came all the way into the library a little hesitantly. He had not been in this room in a very long time. He’d always loved this place. It managed to be both huge and cozy, which, when you think about it, was quite a trick. _But then_ , he realized, _this is the TARDIS we are talking about_. 

The Doctor was on his favorite sofa, pondering something that didn’t look the least little bit like a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. Jack was momentarily distracted by this. “Doctor, tell me you are not reading some trashy novel.”

The Doctor scowled at him. “I _never_ read trashy novels. I sometimes read light fiction. I haven’t read these in, oh, at least a couple of centuries.”

“What?” Jack said as he dropped into a chair near him.

“Nero Wolfe.” The Doctor looked thoughtful. “You know, now that I think of it, you remind me a little of Archie Goodwin…” His voice trailed off as he saw the grin erupt on Jack’s face. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”

Jack shrugged. “I was friends with a friend of Stout’s. Got to know him when he was traveling through Europe in the late 1920s. Interesting guy. Very intense. Great cook.”

The Doctor was looking _very_ put out. “I suppose you are going to say you shagged him.”

Jack laughed. “Oh, hell no. He would probably have knocked my teeth down my throat if I’d even hinted at such a thing. Rex had a temper.”

The Doctor, still scowling, put the book down. “Hmpp. I’m going to be picturing you when I read about Archie from now on. You really are very annoying.”

Jack threw back his head and laughed. “Sorry, sorry.”

They were quiet for a moment, then the Doctor asked “Was there something you wanted, Jack?”

Jack’s features sobered. “Yeah.” He paused. “I need… I need you to translate for me.”

The Doctor frowned. “You know you don’t need…”

“Okay, maybe translate is the wrong word. I need you to act as a go-between. I…” He took a deep breath and went on in a tumble of words, “She won’t talk to me. I’ve tried and she… I’m not sure if she can even hear me. I can’t feel her the way I usually can. And besides, I’m not sure if she can understand what I want to say. I know she understands a lot but you said she has trouble understanding humans… And it’s really important that she understand this.”

The Doctor looked at him thoughtfully. “Understands what?”

Jack sat forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, staring at his fingers as they twisted together. “Tell her I am not mad at her.” 

“I think she already…”

“Tell her I am so sorry she was hurt, but I can’t be sorry it happened.” He could actually feel the Doctor go very still, even though he did not look up. He swallowed the dryness in his throat and went on. “None of it. Being left. Those years when I thought I would never see you again. The years I waited for you. The loneliness of watching them all die, over and over, everyone I liked, loved. Fearing it will always be that way. All the pain. The self-doubt.” He looked up suddenly, a rather sheepish grin on his face. “Self-doubt isn’t easy on someone as confident as I am.”

The Doctor remained very still. To Jack, it looked like his eyes had gotten larger, browner, deeper. He was not looking directly at Jack, and Jack was not sure he was even breathing. He said nothing, did not respond to Jack’s feeble witticism. 

Jack exhaled, drew another breath. “All of it, Doctor. I am not sorry. I’m… I’m glad it happened. Can you tell her that?”

The Doctor stirred slightly, murmured, “She can hear you Jack.”

“Explain to her. Please, Doctor.”

“Explain what?”

“All my life, since I was just a little kid watching the home I’d known, the people I’d known, burning away, I needed to _do_ something. To try to stop it. All the suffering. The universe is so full of suffering, Doctor. I needed to try to help. I needed to feel it was even _possible_ to help, and believe me, that takes faith. I lost that faith. For a long time I lost it, and I lost _me_ , and then you gave it back to me. You gave me back my life in a way that was more profound, and a hell of a lot more important than the way Rose gave me back my life.”

“And then I took it away again.”

Jack reached out, put a hand on the Doctor’s knee. “No. You didn’t. You took _you_ away, but you didn’t take that. The faith. The hope. I still had that.” He shrugged, sat back in the chair. “Most of the time, anyway.” He shook his head. “The important thing is that because of everything that happened I have what I have. I have a purpose. A worthwhile thing to do. I have my team.” He drew a shaky breath, “I got to have Tosh and Owen for a while. Most importantly I have Ianto. Try to make her understand. Even the Year That Never Was. Even _that_ I am glad of, because I am such an idiot that it takes something like that to make me see what was standing in front of me. I have Ianto and Gwen and Martha and you and…” He stopped. The room had brightened slightly and he could finally hear the almost subliminal thrum of the TARDIS. “I wouldn’t change it. None of it.”

The Doctor’s voice was so low Jack barely heard him. “Then you really have forgiven me?”

Jack looked up, a huge smile lighting his face. Laughing, he said, “Oh, yes, Doctor. Long, long ago.”

***

The others had wakened and they’d had a huge breakfast with everyone talking and excited. Everyone but the Doctor–the original Doctor–who ate very little and said less, though he smiled at the silly talk. Jack thought he could see something very dark hidden in the depths of those brown eyes and considered asking him, but in the end he decided that if the Doctor needed to talk he would come to him.

Still, he was just a little surprised that that is what the Doctor did. 

Jack had just finished dressing after a quick shower. The Doctor had said he would drop Jack and Martha and Mickey off first and Jack had been thinking about getting home with more and more excitement. They would be arriving only and hour or so after the Earth had been placed back in her orbit. At least, that is when they were supposed to arrive. The newly rebuilt temporal stabilizer should help with that. He was checking to see that his hair looked good in the mirror when he heard the voice.

“Careful, Jack. If you look too perfect when you get back they won’t believe it when you tell them what a hero you were.”

Jack smirked at himself in the mirror. “You think I look perfect? Why, Doctor. What a nice thing to say.”

He turned to see the end of a monumental eye roll. The Doctor was leaning against the door frame, hands thrust deep in his pockets. Under the false scowl that was meant as a response to Jack’s bratty remark, he seemed to have a rather solemn express. So Jack leaned against the dresser with his hands stuck deep in his own pockets and in as neutral a tone as he could manage, said “Can I do something for you?”

The Doctor looked up at the ceiling a moment, then down at the floor. “I’m here to ask a favor.”

“Anything.” 

“It’s not for me, Jack. It’s for the TARDIS.”

With exactly the same tone, Jack repeated, “Anything.”

The Doctor smiled in acknowledgement of this. “She wanted me to explain. To, well, be a go-between. It’s just that with everything that has happened recently, I think she’s feeling her age a bit. I told you she was very old when I met her. She’s been through so much in the last couple of years.”

Jack nodded. They all had.

“Things have happened that have brought back memories that she had pretty much managed to suppress. I don’t mean our talk last night as much as you might think. Trying to recover from what the Master did to her was much, much worse. Altogether, I think she is feeling her mortality a bit.” He pulled one hand out of a pocket to give the door frame a little pat. “I don’t think the idea of her own death bothers her much, but thinking about _my_ death does.” He sighed. “I didn’t know she was worrying about it until this morning when I told her what I was going to do about--” He stopped suddenly, looked a little startled and a little sheepish. He glanced quickly at Jack, then began an intensive consideration of his shoes. “Anyway, the subject did come up and we both realized that we needed to make some changes.” He glanced up at Jack, then back to his shoes. “You see, in the past, all TARDISes were programmed to make a leap back to Gallifrey if their temporal focus, their Time Lord, died. It’s inherent, part of what you could compare to your autonomic nervous system.”

Jack thought he could see where this was going. “But Gallifrey is gone,” he said softly.

The Doctor raised haunted eyes to him. “Yes. And the thought of having no where to go if she outlives me… They don’t do well without a focus, Jack. They die. And since she is so old, she will probably not outlive me for long. I mean, she wouldn’t be any trouble. I just think she would feel… I don’t know… safer, or less likely to go completely mad, if she could come to you. You wouldn’t have to do anything. And it wouldn’t be for long…”

“Doctor, stop.” Jack walked to him, put one hand on the wall beside the door and the other on the Doctor’s shoulder. “Of course she can come to me. I am honored…” He stopped, suddenly, and tears welled in his eyes. “I am so honored that she wants to do that. So honored that you would let me be with her in that time.” He pulled the Doctor into a one-handed hug, clinging to him tightly for a moment, while with the other hand he stroked the wall. After a while, he managed to get control and let the Doctor go. He kept one hand on the wall, fingers still stroking. “I’ll be honored to take care of her for you, Doctor. Just make sure I know what she needs.” He frowned. “Wait. How is she going to find me? Oh, I suppose she will just come back to some time when she knows where I am.”

The Doctor said, “No, Jack she won’t time travel. Without a temporal focus she couldn’t. Well, she could. But it would be…” He shook his head gravely. “It wouldn’t be good.” He actually shuddered. "No. She will come to you where ever you happen to be at the time.”

“But… so we need to keep in touch from now on, so she’ll know where I am, or…”

The Doctor laughed. He turned slightly, leaned his entire back against the door frame, tilting his head to rest there as well. “Believe me, Jack. She will have no trouble finding you.” His eyes met Jack’s and once again, Jack was reminded that this was no human he was dealing with. The Time Lord was there. As always, when he got a glimpse of who the Doctor really was, he felt both a thrill and not a little intimidated. But there was nothing but wry humor and deep affection in the Doctor’s voice and eyes as he said again, “Believe me, Jack. She’ll find you. You are out of the box, now, Captain. Wave form collapsed. And you are like a temporal beacon pulsing across the Universe. She’ll find you.”

Jack smiled a little sadly. “Well, good. I’ll be glad to have her with me.” He hesitated, then went on, “But not until after a long, long time, Doctor.”

The Doctor grinned at him. “Oh, it will be. I still have three regenerations. It will be a while, I think.”

“Good.”

The Doctor’s grin faded. “And now we need to get down to the consol room. One more trip for the Children of Time.”

He started to turn away. Jack grabbed his shoulder. When the Doctor turned back to face him, he asked, “What’s wrong, Doctor.”

The Doctor took a deep breath. “Nothing.”

Jack shook his head. “No, something is bothering you.”

The Doctor examined his shoes again, for what seemed like a long time. “Nothing that you can help with. Come on. Time to get everyone where they need to be.” 

And without looking back, the Doctor walked down the corridor.


End file.
